140 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Combed and Extracted. 



Blue-Jays and Bee-Martins. 



The California blue-jay frequently 

 helps himself to a breakfast in the 

 apiary, no doubt first attracted to the 

 spot by the imperfect or dead brood 

 thrown out of the hive by the bees ; but 

 in time the jay discovers that worker- 

 bees are palatable morsels, and after the 

 first taste of honey from that source it 

 will perch on top of the hives and de- 

 stroy large numbers of worker-bees. It 

 would be doing the fruit-grower and 

 bee-keeper both a service if the blue-jay 

 was driven out of California. When 

 peaches and apicots are ripening, the 

 jay swoops down on the fruit, driving 

 his beak into the finest specimens, and 

 gashing them so that linnets, hornets, 

 wasps and bees have an opportunity to 

 destroy what the jay has left of the 

 injured fruit. 



There is another bird still worse than 

 the blue-jay. The bee-martin breeds 

 and multiplies in southern California, so 

 that in and about an apiary where there 

 are trees, they become a great nuisance, 

 and destroy large quantities of worker- 

 bees. They have a habit of getting in 

 the hive of bees as they come home from 

 the pasturage. The martin, on the 

 wing, with its mouth wide open, hovers 

 in the air taking every bee it can reach ; 

 one bird will destroy hundreds of bees 

 in a day. — C. N. Wilson, in the Rural 

 Caiifornian. 



Occupations of Insects, Birds, Etc. 



The marmot, so naturalists say, is a 

 civil engineer ; he not only builds 

 houses, but constructs aqueducts and 

 drains to keep them dry. • The white 

 ants maintain a regular army of soldiers. 

 The East India ants are horticulturists ; 

 they make mushrooms, upon which they 

 feed their young. Wasps are paper 

 manufacturers. Caterpillars are silk- 

 spinners. The bird "ploceus textor"is a 

 weaver ; he weaves a web to make his 

 nest. The prima is a tailor; he sews 

 the leaves together to make his nest. 

 The squirrel is a ferryman ; with a chip 

 or a piece of bark for a boat, and his 

 tail for a sail, he crosses a stream. 

 Dogs, wolves, jackals, and many others 

 are hunters. 



The black bear and heron are fisher- 

 men. The ants are regular Jday-labor- 

 ers. The monkey is a rope dancer. The 

 association of beavers presents us with 

 a model of republicanism. The bees 

 live under a monarchy. The Indian 

 antelopes furnish an example of patri- 

 archial government. 



Bees are geometricans ; their cells are 

 so constructed as, with least quantity of 

 material, to have the largest-sized spaces 

 and the least possible loss of interstice. 

 So also is the ant-lion ; his funnel- 

 shaped trap is exactly correct in its con- 

 formation, as if it had been made by the 

 skillful artist of our species, with the 

 aid of the best instruments. The mole 

 is a meteorologist. The bird called the 

 lime-killer is an arithmetician, so also, 

 is the crow, the wild-turkey, and some 

 other birds. The torpedo, the ray, and 

 the electric eel, are electricians. 



Temporary Loss of Prolificness. 



Gfoing through the apiary, a good 

 many years ago, I noticed a colony that 

 seemed to be decreasing, when it should 

 have been increasing in population. On 

 looking them over I found the brood- 

 nest very small, occupying only a small 

 part of three combs, perhaps four inches 

 in diameter in the center one. There 

 was one queen-cell completed, the old 

 queen was there, and a very few eggs. 

 All of the comb not containing brood 

 was filled with honey. The queen was 

 young, and had been a good one, so I 

 knew the colony should not be in any 

 such condition. I destroyed the queen- 

 cell, extracted the honey from all the 

 combs, and closed the hive. Four weeks 

 later there was the usual amount of 

 brood in it. From some unknown cause 

 the queen had temporarily lost her pro- 

 lificness, and later had regained it. 



At another time I found a colony in a 

 similar condition except that there was 

 a young queen, apparently not fertile, 

 instead of a cell. I took the extractor 

 and gave the colony a dose of the same 

 medicine. In due time there were two 

 fertile and apparently prolific queens in 

 it. They soon made the hive (contain- 

 ing 20 Quinby frames) very populous, 

 and kept it so the remainder of the sea- 

 son. With Italian bees, two queens in 

 a hive— an old one that has lost her 

 fecundity, and her daughter — is quite 

 common, as they seem to permit super- 

 annuated queens to live until they die of 

 old age. But two fertile queens in a 

 hive is a very rare occurrence. — J. H. 

 Townley, in Farm, Stock and Home. 



